Liberals are very pleased with the verdict in the Scooter Libby trial. Libby was found guilty of perjury — of asserting under oath that he did not reveal to various reporters the identity of Valerie Plame when in fact he did. Many see the Libby verdict as (further) evidence of the vitiated state of the Bush Administration. Liberals are pleased that this is the case. Conservatives, meanwhile, are outraged — “Pardon Scooter Libby!” is the cry from the Corner.
There are two issues here: (1) is the Libby verdict evidence that the Bush Administration is unscrupulous? and (2) given the obvious parallels between Libby and Clinton, are the Corner’s (and other Conservatives’) calls for Libby’s pardon hypocritical? I will consider (1) now, and (2) after my nappy.
The answer to the first question is no, and to see why consider: Valerie Plame is the wife of Joe Wilson. Joe Wilson was, at the behest of his wife, sent to Africa in 2002 in order to ascertain whether there was any evidence that Saddam Hussein was in possession of WMD. Wilson returned and wrote an Op-Ed in the New York Times alleging that, almost certainly, Hussein was not in possession of WMDs. Why Wilson alleged that there Hussein had no WMDs is a subject of speculation. That he was (and is) an ideological foe of the Bush Administration suggests that he might have been motivated simply by a desire to embarrass the Bushies. Of course, it is also possible (and, I suspect, probable) that he sincerely believed that there were no WMDs. Irrespective, the Bush Administration believed two things about his Op-Ed: first that it was wrong and second that it hurt their case for war.
So what did the Bush Administration do? It attempted to discredit the false information (a noble endeavor) by demonstrating that Joe Wilson had been sent to Africa not on his merits, but because of his connections (and so, presumably, was unqualified to draw the conclusions he drew). In short, the Bush Administration outed Valerie Plame in order to discredit a purveyor of misinformation (misinformation that, admittedly, turned out to be true). There is nothing wrong with that objective.
Some, though, question the means by which the Bush Administration went about achieving its objective. They note that Plame was a “covert operative.” It should be emphasized however that it was never illegal for anybody to reveal the identity of Valerie Plame. The Bush Administration, in other words, broke no laws in achieving their valid objective. In short, the Bush Administration pursued a good objective legally — it is beyond reproach.
